Unusual Suspects
Julie and her friends are framed for a series of pranks and set out to prove their name. Meanwhile, a fanboy of a TV show is slowly driven to madness by his worship of it. He kidnaps a group of adults lobbying against the show due to its imitative nature. Plot Cold Open Bob and Enid discuss their concerns over violent video games and how Colleen perceives them. Bob had bought a copy of one of those games and after hearing something outside, sees Colleen punching the street. Bob realizes that he had bought a con job of the game he wanted and he begrudgingly agrees to go to an actual store from now on. Episode Julie and her friends are walking to school. Megan is distracted by a butterfly and as she follows it, she sees a student playing by himself. The others go to watch and he sees them. They playfully tease him but he takes it to heart and mocks them. They let it slide and head to school. The gang overhears a conversation regarding Super Crime Fighters, and them mocking it mercilessly. The student from before, Glan Dular, arrives and establishes himself as a fan of the show and futilely tries to defend it, but is mocked, especially over his childish behavior. Glan blames the slip on Julie, but everyone makes it clear they already knew about it. Glan further puts down Julie and her friends, ignorant over the good they've done for the school. Cosmo makes an announcement, calling Julie's gang to the office. Upon going there, the gang is pinned for a series of pranks that occurred the previous day. Their pleas of innocence fall on deaf ears and they're expelled. To the committee, Bob screens an episode of Super Crime Fighters and wants to encourage the committee to rally against it, feeling that it's a terrible show. Burt and Jade initially show no interest, refusing to go the route of other figures who've done the same thing. Bob reinforces that he just wants to go after the one show to encourage networks to make more imaginative programing. Jade relents, but Burt still refuses to go along with it, as is a majority of the community, but Bob is able to get the support of Enid, Hanneke, Amber, Martha, Harold, Dakota, Muriel, Lynn, Hen, Ned, Majel, Chelsea and Autumn for the sake of their kids, with additional support from Trish, Amelia, Veronica, Andy, Mike and Chris, though they mostly want to tag along to avoid an alternative plan by Burt involving a trip to a health seminar. Burt later concedes after getting a call from Gerald and Penelope Sutcliffe over an attack inspired by the show. At lunch, the Weirdos and Jupiter discuss the events. Jupiter brings up how her sister Selma had nothing against Cosmo and that she only pranks people she openly hates. The conversation is cut short when a rat crawls up Jenny's pants. Glan, imitating something he saw on Super Crime Fighters, kicks Jenny down. Jerry goes to help her and Glan imitates another scene, making him look worse. In a last ditch attempt at making the show look good, Glan attempts a stunt, but lands in a trash can. The can is tossed out the window by Ashley and Fiona. To Julie's gang, they're playing a game of basketball and are trying to make heads of their situation. Some are unwilling to tell their parents what happened, while Julie wants to prove their innocence. Victor is the most reluctant, not willing to potentially get in any actual trouble, but reluctantly concedes after losing a bet with Julie. They see the trash can Glan was tossed in rolling down a hill and knocking over Bob and company. Recognizing most of them, and realizing that they would catch on to the expulsion, the gang hides. Glan crashes into a wall and finds himself before the grownups. He reveals he's a fan of Super Crime Fighters and is tricked into associating the destruction with the show. The adults ravage the show and go into their plan to get it cancelled, later turning their attention to one episode to sum up why they hate the show so much. Break Bob discusses an episode of Super Crime Fighters. The show is based on an ultra violent video game but was watered down considerably, reducing characters to predetermined stereotypes and making a young boy the main protagonist and taking away screen time from better known characters. Bob also decries the anime style, noting that more time went into the design than the animation, itself stilted and lacking in-betweens. The episode itself was made on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The boy, Henry Kaspanoff, is getting bullied by an African American bully named Derek. Bob makes special mention of Derek speaking in ebonics and having an obsession with hip-hop, though he and the adults are more upset the show used a radio safe rapper rather than a better known one. Derek is turned into a mutant by the show's main villain and a subplot involving a white man attempting to destroy Martin Luther King Jr. Day is brought up, Enid and Hen share immediate disgust due to the man being portrayed as a negatively stereotypical southerner (Enid and Hen are from Arkansas and Oklahoma respectively.) The episode ends with Derek returning to normal and Henry apologizing even though Derek harmed him and Henry had no involvement in the mutation. The southener is killed off screen and Henry gets punished for no reason. It concludes with Henry suddenly breaking into tears after a joke regarding the punishment and a tacked on dedication to MLK. End of Break Flustered, Glan attempts to drive the adults into a mental dead end by bringing up potential political views, but it doesn't go anywhere due to their lack of interest in the topic. He is further humiliated after Hanneke challenges him to a fight and he's unable to leave an impact with his only punch. Glan vows vengeance but the adults depart, laughing uproariously. He returns home to watch the show. Julie and her friends go back to school to get in the dismissal line, hoping to prevent their respective parents from knowing about the expulsion. Upon getting home, averting conversations regarding school, the kids steal tapes from their parents' answering machines after finding out that Cosmo left a message regarding the expulsion. Julie calls Angela to stage a fake sleepover so they could plan together (and since Kerry's out on business.) Their parents agree to let them go, but not without suspicion. At school the next day, while Glan scrawls mindlessly on his desk, he is given back an essay test with a failing grade, having dedicated it to the Super Crime Fighters and going against the main topic. The students mock him for trying to defend himself. His attention is drawn to Georgina, who's sharing a rumor regarding one of the actors on Super Crime Fighters, that he supposedly hates his own show. Glan denies this and Georgina encourages him to tune in to a radio interview where the actor, Donny Michaels, will discuss the show. To Julie and co., they attempt to find proof that they weren't behind the pranks. They recall the night in question and try to think of any potential suspects, but find trouble due to their peers' only going after people who provoke them. Victor recalls seeing someone briefly in the hall but can't connect it to anyone. Mack wants to blame Glan, but Julie feels he's harmless and has taken pity on him for his behavior. The others are skeptical and think he's so far gone he could be the culprit they seek, but they reluctantly give him the benefit of the doubt. Glan overhears the radio show. To his horror, Georgina was right and Michaels hates his own show. He jokingly taunts people who enjoy the show, but Glan takes it to heart. He goes into a rant but is curtly hushed by his younger sister. With the radio still on, Glan hears Michaels speaking positively of Bob's movement against the show. Glan has a nightmare over his experiences and breaks down upon awakening. Dakota arrives at Angela's house, revealing that she found out about the expulsion. Julie vies for her innocence but Dakota doesn't believe her. Julie harshly criticizes Dakota for jumping to conclusions and the latter leaves, hurt. The adults congregate, planning to travel to the capital to do something about the show. A gas bomb is thrown into the room and everyone promptly collapses. At school, news spreads that the adults, along with Michaels, have miraculously disappeared. After getting teased again after lumping what happened with Super Crime Fighters, Glan beats up a student and is sent to the principal's office. A few slips causes Cosmo to realize that Julie and her friends were in fact framed, but Glan knocks Cosmo out before he could let anyone know the truth. Dakota awakens in a messy room, bound with rope. She's able to break through her restraints and seeks out the others. She locates the other adults and frees each of them and they try to figure out where they are. They overhear the girls of the Elites in another room and they reveal they were brought under similar pretenses. It goes to Cosmo, tied up in his office and just waking up to realize so. He calls Dakota to let her know Julie is cleared of all charges and the expulsion was lifted. The adults overhear someone getting beat up in another room and see it's Glan doing so to Michaels, forcing him to reevaluate his opinion on Super Crime Fighters. The gang discovers the adults are gone, their siblings were conned into silence but are quickly swayed into talking, revealing that Glan was behind it. They don't know where he's holding the adults, but Julie decides to check the warehouse where they first encountered him. Upon getting there, they unknowingly activate a trap which begins to flood the room the adults are in. They find Glan and Michaels and try to sway the latter to let everyone go. Glan is complicit and attacks the gang, only to get subdued by all but Julie. Julie tries to talk to him, but having become so obsessed with the show, he has developed a one-sided perspective on people and still refuses to trust Julie. She becomes infuriated when he attacks her mother and a fight breaks out between them. Mack frees Michaels, but he quickly leaves without a word. Michaels trips and accidentally releases the door on the Elites side. They chase after Michaels, having roped him into an endorsement plan that he backed out of and proceed to attack him. The gang's attention is drawn to the drowning adults and she attempts to free them from the room. The others attempt to help, and Julie gets a little extra motivation through the guilt she felt over arguing with her mother, though she doesn't get anywhere until she realizes she had turned an access valve the wrong way. Glan is captured and thrown into a chamber, where he comes face to face with those who were harmed by his obsession with Super Crime Fighters. He denies the damage he has caused and Julie attempts to sway him, but he refuses and breaks down. We see Glan is back at the alley where everything started, battered and bruised. Julie and co. surround him and pelt him with water balloons. In a post credit sequence, Michaels returns to his house and through a radio broadcast we learn that the grown ups made due on their campaign against the show, having publicized their movement, but we get no resolution if their efforts were successful. As Michaels gets ready for bed, we see a stranger has broke into his house, it being a co-DJ on the show Michael appeared on that he snubbed for an autograph, donning a laden glove. The screen goes black and we learn that they were trick blades. Michael apathetically tells the man to leave. Trivia * The animation in the break segment was produced by Beetle Brain Productions. * Glan is voiced by Ian James Corlett. * Glan's name is a pun on the term "glandular". * Corky's actual name is revealed in the episode. * The Super Crime Fighters seems to be a parody of the Street Fighter animated series, as aspects of Super Crime Fighters are references to what occurred in the former show. * Donny Michaels name is a pun on the name of actor Michael Donovan, who coincidentally starred as Guile in the Street Fighter cartoon. * The radio show, Evan of the Yukon, is a pun on the name of the cartoon series Yvon of the Yukon. * Victor's paranoid ramblings over what'll happen when they meet the principal is actually a reference to the plot of the first half of School Daze, an episode of the horror anthology series Freddy's Nightmares. * Mack's siblings' names seem to reference the first names of characters in The Incredible Hulk; Mary referrs to Mary MacPherran, the real name of She Hulk villain Titania, and Bruce and Jennifer are nodes to the normal identities of Hulk and She Hulk, Bruce Banner and Jennifer Walters respectively. * Often considered to be an experimental episode, the actions done in the episode are more cartoony than earlier ones. This style was abandoned by the next episode. * When talking about the moves in Super Crime Fighters, it's seemingly a node to a line in a commercial for the infamous game Rise of the Robots. * One of the few episodes to be adapted from the books, though the premise was altered. In the book, it centers on Glan becoming obsessed with a propaganda cartoon about the Red Scare. He antagonizes Julie and her friends after the former does an essay on Joseph Stalin. He also goes after most of the committee after discovering one of the grown ups is of Russian descent. * When Bob decries visual novels in lieu of Super Crime Fighter's limited animation he leaves out the Rockett series. Strange produced a pilot based on the games in 1999. * The scenes where Michaels is attacked and Glan's downfall are parodies of scenes from Tales from the Hood. *The episode became an early internet meme in the late-2000s, particularly its Dutch, Luxembourgish, German and Finnish dubs. The characters frequently exclaim "Bassoon!", which is a parody of a quote made in the Street Fighter cartoon (itself subject to parody with Super Crime Fighters.) Due to each dub using a straight translation of the English script, "bassoon" when translated turns to "fagot", "fagott" and "fagotti", and said clips would often be used for dry reactions in videos. It's believed that this was the earliest presence the show had on the internet through YouTube videos. *During the credits of Super Crime Fighters, shown early on in the episode, we see an executive producer credit for "Guy Hewsmels", a pun on Guy Houston, a cleanup artist on the show. In the last still is a message which reads: **EVERYONE WAS HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS EPISODE, AND I DON'T MEAN NO ORDINARY BOO BOOS, I MEAN ENOUGH DAMAGE TO MAKE YOUR MAMA CRY. WORKING ON THIS EPISODE NUMEROUS ANIMATORS SUFFERED FATAL CARPEL TUNNEL SYNDROME, THEIR EYES BLEW UP DUE TO KEEPING THEM OPEN FOR SO LONG, AND ALL THAT SITTING MEANT THAT THEY COULDN'T GET THEIR BLOOD FLOWING TOO GOOD. WE EMPLOY YOU NOT TO WATCH THIS SHOW, EXCESSIVE VIEWING COULD LEAD TO INSANITY, SWEAT PROBLEMS AND THE NEED TO FIGHT THE NEAREST REPUBLICAN. TREATMENT FOR INTENSE EXPOSURE CAN BE FOUND NOWHERE, SO YOU MAY AS WELL MOVE TO YUKON AND LIVE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE AS A BABBLING ESKIMO PERSON. OH YEAH, AND COPYRIGHT YADDA YADDA YADDA, REDISTRIBUTION OF THIS PRODUCT WILL LEAD TO SOME PEOPLE GETTING REAL MAD AND STUFF AND YOU'LL SHARE A CELL WITH SOME CREEPY GUY FOR A FEW YEARS PROVIDED YOU DON'T GIVE US MONEY. WHERE'RE MY RIGHTS?